Ok, I held off on my opinion initially because I was curious as to how people would see it.
I'm picking up a lot of negative feedback about the color scheme. Don't worry about that, colors can easily be changed and customized. It would be a bit of a change moving from brown to white, just as it was a change moving from blue to brown, right?
I agree that the latest-to-earliest post sequencing is confusing but this can also easily be fixed. Black Isle use exactly the same UBB v.6.0.1 and their posts are sequenced earliest-to-latest.
The interface appears to be a lot easier to use, with a lot more buttons to use smileys, UBB etc. HTML is currently switched off, but could easily be switched on if Ziroc decides to do that.
The private messaging thing appears to be a concern for a number of people worried about invasion of privacy and I can understand that. However, I'm a bit puzzled - isn't this essentially just the same as sending someone an email? I think there's an option to block all private messages to be sent to a user (the same as not displaying your email on your profile on this board).
The rating system does have the potential to drive wedges between people. We've already had a couple of issues involving people wanting to leave/thinking of leaving because of feelings of being unloved, unpopular, etc. I won't go into that as it's been given more than enough airplay in my opinion. Rating posters on a scale of 1-5 will probably only reinforce feelings of inadequacy in people who have a low self-esteem and get rated low (or not get rated at all).
However, we also need to think about how much easier this forum will be to run and manage. Maybe Ziroc can give us his perspective on that!
Just my thoughts.
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My name is Memnoch. And your name is...not important, for the dead have no need for names.